REF 2021 Open Access policy on gold Open Access

Some UK funders have a preference for gold open access. ‘Gold’ open access usually means the immediate, permanent, and free to access availability of the published version of record on the publisher’s website and with a licence that permits copying and reuse. Outputs that are made open access through the ‘gold’ route, at the point of first publication, in accordance with other funder’s requirements and definitions, meet the requirement of the REF 2021 open access policy. HEIs will need to confirm that outputs were available immediately after publication via the gold route.

Recommendations

All research active staff and students publishing journal articles or conference proceedings should upload their accepted manuscripts to www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk immediately after acceptance for publication.

However, outputs which have not been uploaded to www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk but are nonetheless published as gold Open Access will still be eligible for the REF. The Open Access Team will try to ensure this information, where it can be easily discovered, is correctly reflected within Symplectic Elements, however, we cannot guarantee that we’ll always get this right. If you are being told your paper is non-compliant but it has been published as Gold Open Access, please let us know.